Our Commercial Property Team recently successfully completed the purchase of a large industrial site in North Manchester on behalf of a local Civil Engineering firm.

The team were presented with various challenges throughout the transaction, from timescales to finance structure. However, the most apparent difficulty we were faced with was the extreme complexity of the legal title. The site incorporated five different registered titles, there was a combination of freehold and leasehold tenures, many ancient documents could not be traced and the registered proprietors were not consistent throughout these aforementioned titles.

The investigation of the title was rather time consuming and at time tedious, however once we fully deduced title there was a strong sense of both relief and achievement! Some of the issues we were faced with included rights of way transferred out of the title, access to and from the property, identifying the exact boundaries and the fact that part of the premises is subject to certain covenants which the remainder was exempt from.

Our searches produced some intriguing results due to the previous use of the site and the site's exact location. All results were noted and researched fully to both ours and the client's satisfaction.

Drafting legal documentation took considerable time and skill at various intervals during the whole process. The differing proprietors meant that separate contracts and deeds, amongst other things, had to be drawn up with both ourselves and the seller's representatives having to agree on the content, structure and formatting of the same.

We like to think that our client was left satisfied, in terms of our service, communication and fees, and hope that we are given further similar opportunities from both them and others alike.